In an era of increasingly specialised and specialist publications,
it is refreshing (if not downright exciting) to read a work unhampered by
disciplinary boundaries and totally free of jargon. 'Confronting Empire'
is a collection of edited and transcribed discussions between the brilliant
Eqbal Ahmad and radio producer David Barsamian. It is a demanding book,
but for the right reasons. It reads easily and fluidly, and the only prerequisites
are that the reader has an alert mind and is ready for an intellectual challenge.

Ahmad was born in Bihar, India in 1933 and died in Islamabad, Pakistan,
in 1999. As a child, he met the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who, laying
his hands on Ahmad's head told him to 'be a good boy'. A few years later
Ahmad found himself accompanying Mahatma Gandhi on his travels for the
better part of six weeks. Alongside such exciting encounters, however,
there was also great sadness. Ahmad's early childhood was marked by the
violent murder of his father and later by the Partition of India, after
which he emigrated to Pakistan with his brothers.

Although Ahmad's life began and ended in South Asia, he became a true
world citizen in the intervening years. He lived alternately in North
America, North Africa, and South Asia, turning his incisive mind to injustices
whenever and wherever he encountered them. In the course of these intellectual
voyages, he came to know statesmen and activists such as Frantz Fanon,
Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Yasir Arafat, many of whom went on to become
close friends. It therefore comes as no surprise that the inside cover
of the book contains high praise from Kofi Annan, and that Edward Said
has contributed a wonderfully-written and personal fifteen-page Foreword.

David Barsamian is an expert interviewer, comfortable discussing big
ideas with intellectual heavyweights (having previously conducted interviews
with Zinn and Chomsky respectively). Throughout the discussions, Barsamian
steers a clear course: present, but not overbearing, articulate and ready
to challenge any inconsistency, but never dominating. At no point will
the reader forget who is interviewing whom, and credit should go to Barsamian
for putting Ahmad at ease and letting him do the talking.

The structure of the collection, not to mention the manner in which Ahmad's
agile mind literally hops from topic to topic, is strangely reminiscent
of Kahil Gibran's The Prophet. The reader is presented with nuggets
of perfectly articulated wisdom which can be dipped into, thought about,
and digested when ready. To say that Eqbal Ahmad is more political than
the poet Gibran would be a truism, but then Ahmad's thoughts are political
in a non-partisan way. He displays no lasting allegiance to any party
or movement, and criticises Henry Kissinger (whom he tried to kidnap)
and Yasir Arafat (with whom he worked) in almost the same breath. As Eqbal
sees it, we live in a political world, full of concealed injustices, and
only clear thinking can cut through confusion and misinformation.

It is impossible to paraphrase Eqbal Ahmad and remain true to the original,
so a few choice citations are fitting at this point. Regarding Indian
independence and partition, Ahmad is full of original insight. He portrays
Gandhi as an 'anti-imperialist opportunist who would do anything within
the framework of his non-violent philosophy that would mobilize the masses'
(page 4), and believes that the roots of the terrible violence that followed
independence lay in the non-violence that Gandhi propagated. He follows
Tagore's reasoning by arguing that 'nationalism tends to create emotions
of exclusion and separation based on differences and not commonality'
(ibid). A further point, noted by others, but rarely so succinctly, is
that 'nationalism is an anti-Islamic ideology, because nationalism proceeds
to create boundaries where Islam is a faith without boundaries' (page
5). No surprise then, when the World Bank gets an intellectual beating,
an organization which, in Ahmad's analysis, believes that 'third-world
countries don't need higher education, they need more literacy. Its policies
are aimed at producing a relatively more skilled pool of workers and not
people who can govern themselves' (page 20). Much of his thinking draws
on explicitly Marxist modes of analysis, such as: 'Corporations now spend
much less on human beings as units of production and much more on human
beings as units of consumption. The major research in most corporations
is on how to sell, not on how to produce' (page 149). Nothing escapes
his reasoned critique, and with a few words he makes sense of whole nation-states:
'Russia is struggling haphazardly to become a capitalist society. They
plunged, with the collapse of socialism, into the culture of greed that
capitalism entails without the other two components that make it a working
system, that is, managerial organizational discipline and productive capabilities.
The result is that Russia looks increasingly like a second-rate third-world
country' (page 125).

'We are living in modern times throughout the world and yet are dominated
by medieval minds' concludes Eqbal Ahmad (page 85). Although too humble
to say it of himself, Ahmad was an exception: a truly modern mind coupled
with a compassionate soul. His thoughts are as provocative as his arguments
are compelling. These interviews should be read. *

Mark Turin, MA is completing his grammar of the Thangmi language,
spoken in central eastern Nepal. He is currently affiliated to the Department
of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge and working in the Digital
Himalaya project.
E-mail: markturin@compuserve.com